The anguished parents of a 13-year-old boy who disappeared after jumping into the East River were still grasping for answers days later – and called on the NYPD to widen the search for their missing son.
Kavion Brown Godfrey, 13, was last seen treading the murky water of the East River near East 6th Street and the FDR Drive a bit before 4:30 p.m. Friday, with witnesses reporting he was swept away by a current, police said.
“I don’t have any idea why he would have gone into the water. That’s something I can’t just think about,” his distraught mother, Laquana Badger-Godfrey, 32, told The Post while crying on the phone.
“My son was very intelligent,” she said, describing him as “the happiest boy.”
“I’ve been going through hell,” the stricken woman said.
“I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I can’t eat. I want my son.”
Kavion’s father, Donnell Godfrey, 34, said he thought his son was under the supervision of a basketball coach at school.
Police officials on Tuesday said the search for Kavion was ongoing – but the boy’s parents don’t think it’s enough.
“I feel like there needs to be a greater search,” his dad said.
“The East River is very large, and I think we need a more extensive search.”
“We need every corner searched from Brooklyn to the Bronx to Long Island. We need a worldwide search,” the missing teen’s mom added.
The mother of four said she had spoken to Kavion the afternoon he went missing, and he was supposed to be at a soccer game.
She was shocked when her husband later called to tell her Kavion had gone missing in the river.
“I was home with my three other children because I recently picked them up from school, and then we came home. I already spoke to Kavion, so I knew Kavion was okay. But then I got a phone call from my husband. My husband called me and said, ‘babe you need to get out there, go.’ He said, ‘go down to the river. It’s Kavion,'” Laquana recalled.
“I ran down to 7th [Street], and I walked into a whole world of trouble. The coaches were trying to talk, FDNY, the police officers — it was a mess,” she said.
Donnell said he’d gotten a call earlier from a man who identified himself only as “Coach Joe” and who asked if Kavion could attend a soccer game for Lower East Side Prep, the teen’s school where he plays basketball.
“He was supposed to support the soccer team because my son is a star player on the basketball team. The coach was like, ‘there’s a big soccer game today and no basketball practice, and we want all the kids from school to come support the soccer team,'” the dad said.
Cops believe that after the soccer game, Kavion may have been trying to prove himself to his friends when he went into the river.
“We’re hearing that he was trying to impress a girl or, perhaps, on a dare ended up in the water,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters Tuesday.
The boy’s mom said that didn’t sound like him,
“My son, he didn’t fool around in that way,” Laquana told The Post.
Investigators are working to track down video of the incident, Kenny said at an unrelated press briefing.
“We heard that it was possibly a dare from one child to another and that it was possibly videotaped,” he told reporters.
“We’re still tracking that down. To this point we haven’t recovered or identified anybody who took that video, but it’s certainly part of our investigation.”
Donnell said a lack of communication from investigators is making his son’s disappearance even more frustrating.
“I have yet to hear anything about what’s happened because no one has contacted us. All I’ve heard is that there may be some type of footage. And if the footage shows he was dared, I was never told that,” the dad said.
Kenny said detectives are still looking for Kavion and have been updating the family since Friday, but inclement weather the day the boy went missing made the search harder.
“Harbor was there. Scuba was there. Aviation was there. They did their best for about three hours and forty minutes after the incident to try to find the child. He could not be located,” the police official said.
“They actually went back later that evening at like 9 o’clock at night and still were utilizing every asset we have to try to find this missing persona and we haven’t found him yet,” he added.
A former teacher has created a Go Fund Me on behalf of Kavion’s family, with some of the money raised meant to help them keep looking for their loved one independently, Laquana said.
“He was a wonderful kid, and we all want him to be alright, and we have to make sure he’s alright, so we have to find him,” Donnell said.